Award-winning Microsoft researcher missing at sea

SAN FRANCISCO  The U.S. Coast Guard is expected to resume searching Tuesday (Jan. 30) for the founder of Microsoft Bay Area Research Center, who has been missing at sea since Sunday.

Jim Gray, 63, sailed alone from here Sunday morning toward the Farallon Islands, west of the Golden Gate, in good weather. His wife notified the Coast Guard Sunday night when he didn't return home and did not answer his cellphone. He reportedly had set out, aboard his 40-foot sailboat Tenacious, to scatter his mother's ashes.

Gray joined Microsoft 10 years ago Gray, after working as an industrial researcher and software designer at IBM and Tandem. He won the ACM Turing Award in 1998 for his work on transaction processing.